January 2020
Stephan Bodian ~ Working with Trauma on the Path of Awakening
When I asked my first Zen teacher about becoming a monk, he said, “Monasteries are places for desperate people.” Many of us are drawn to the spiritual path because of the suffering we experience as the result of early-life trauma, be it childhood abuse or neglect, life-threatening experiences, or repeated situations where our physical or emotional survival or integrity seem to be at stake.
Compared with the ordinary range of painful life experiences, trauma has a unique impact on the psyche and the nervous system that can complicate the awakening process and leave us feeling especially frightened, isolated, or unintegrated.
In this satsang, we’ll explore how to relate to the effect our trauma continues to have on our lives, in the context of awakening. Includes teachings, guided meditation, and dialogue.
Stephan Bodian has been sharing the direct approach to spiritual awakening for more than 40 years. A former Buddhist monk and a longtime student of Advaita master Jean Klein, Stephan received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. Since 2007 he has taught the annual months-long School for Awakening, which will begin again, in online form, in January 2020. His books include Wake Up Now and Beyond Mindfulness.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Pamela Wilson ~ The Love That Does Not Come or Go, Part 2: 4-day Online Retreat
Join Pamela Wilson for a 4-day Online Retreat
The Love That Does Not Come or Go, Part 2
Ongoing Inquiry into The Formless Heart which Holds, and Is Within, Everything
January 21, 23, 28, 30, 2020
10:00 am to 12:00 pm Pacific Time
Time Zone Converter
Please join Pamela Wilson, and the host Sara Kasprowicz of Open Circle, for four online satsangs at the end of January.
It takes a team of sages to explore the vastness and simplicity of Love, so bring your aware noticing, curiosity and insights as we all dive into the heart of the formless, as well as form and function, revealing the radiant constancy within all!
Each satsang will last two hours, beginning with a ten minute silent sit together, followed by a wide-ranging exploration into whatever you and we all are being with. Respectful inquiry within invites ancient defended contractions to unfurl and then root, supporting our embodiment in a felt sense of Oneness.
Pamela evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She is celebrated for her ability to open the heart and create a space in which long-cherished struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please bring your questions!
More about Pamela: www.pamelasatsang.com
This Retreat consists of:
- 4 live and interactive 2-hour Satsangs with Pamela in Zoom (a total of 8 hours)
- audio and video recordings of all meetings (we only record Pamela's video and Questioner's audio)
We meet via Zoom - a platform allowing for live video conversations, which means you will have the opportunity to see/hear and be seen/heard by Pamela and other participants. You will also have the option to switch your camera off and remain invisible.
To proceed to Registration, please affirm that you have read and agree to these terms:
click here to READ TERMS.
Registration: $70 - $110
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can.
For practical questions please contact Sara at sara@opencirclecenter.org.
Tom Kurzka ~ Meeting Difficult Energies — Integrating Presence with Fully Living Here
Every time we stop, we taste a gap in the experience, spacious awareness, that which is always here as the background and holding for the life experience, much like the blank white screen in the movie theater upon which the images of the movie appear. We know this simple truth intellectually and also to a certain extent in our Heart. But then the challenges of life sweep us away from this simple knowing, usually in the form of difficult energies that overwhelm us. We want to run and hide, we feel abandoned and lost. We overeat, we abuse substances, we distract, we try to escape, but the difficult energies continue to chase us. And yet, we’re told to just meet the difficult energies directly and they will dissolve back into spacious awareness. Easier said than done, because the difficult energies are our worse nightmare.
In this event we will gently explore ways in which we can get more comfortable in our own human skin, including the parts that we can’t stand. We will cover:
- Four common ways of dealing with difficult energies: suppression, pushing away, spacious embrace, and wisdom action guided by spacious embrace.
- How to use the breath and the intensity of the difficult energies as an ally, an anchor to the present moment, to overcome the habitual tendency of the reactive mind to run and hide or to fight back.
- Acknowledging and soothing our distrust in life as a means of establishing trust in the living Presence of Life itself to hold the vulnerability of our humanness.
About Tom
After being asked to teach, Tom has been sharing this work for over 19 years. His sessions give attendees a taste of what he exudes, a patient tender Love that is our true interconnected nature. His focus on connection to the immediacy of felt sensation enables potent transformations to readily manifest. His work and presence is an acknowledgement that our beautiful imperfect human condition is completely embraced by the wide openness of Life itself, even when the most uncomfortable aspects of ourselves appear.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »February 2020
Tilicho ~ “On Truth”
What is Truth? What do we mean by "Awakening", "Enlightenment", "Self-realisation", "Samadhi", "The Natural State"? What are the spiritual traps? You are invited to explore what is it that you are really looking for.
About Tilicho:
Tilicho spontaneously realized the Self in 1998 without following any teaching or practice. The absence of spiritual conditioning allowed her to see through the veils of spiritual idealism and illusions. She ended up spending thirteen years in Tiruvannamalai in south India, the seat of Ramana Maharshi and the sacred mountain, Arunachala. While recognizing the beauty of the Advaita teachings, she also observed that they can easily be misunderstood and distorted. Although the Self is eternally free from the world, it is not separate from it. Clarity does not exclude openness. Her teaching stresses the need to combine Masculine and Feminine qualities and approaches. It is an invitation to find unity within and without.
“May all beings realize who they truly are! Om Sat Chit Ananda.”
If you wish to follow the initiation with the help of the book The Source, satsangs will also be the place to provide support, help, healing and clarity.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ The Sacrament of Love
10 am to 12 noon (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter
Realization allows us to know ourselves as a force of love and the embodiment of that realization results in living love in our daily lives. Join Jeannie for an exploration of realization, love and the joys and challenges of living that knowing.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can. Review in advance info for joining event.
To proceed to Registration, please affirm that you have read and agree to these terms:
click here to READ TERMS.
NOTE: All event are shown in PACIFIC TIME, as in San Francisco, CA, USA (more details on time conversion below)
TIME CONVERSION for your location (see link to Time Zone Converter near top of this page)
All event are shown in PACIFIC TIME, as in San Francisco, CA, USA:
MORE INFO ABOUT TIME ZONE CONVERSION...
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), same as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), is the international basis for other time zones.
10 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) is 5 pm UTC
10 am PST (Pacific Standard Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) is 6 pm UTC
Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) March into November and Pacific Standard Time (PST) November into March
Check specific dates here: Clock Changes in United States
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ If the Buddha had Trauma: Being Present with Stress Activation
Throughout the history of spirituality, very little has been taught about how to be present with stress activation in our nervous system. In Buddha’s day that was not even considered. In fact, it is only in recent decades that this has been understood at all. At this time, life on planet Earth is stressful for everyone, and most of us have experienced trauma in greater or lesser degrees. This can make both our meditation practice and our awakening/embodiment process more challenging.
Nondual wisdom teaches us that awakening involves being present with “what is.” However, when it comes to stress and trauma that may require additional, skillful support, which will be discussed and demonstrated. This webinar is also an introduction to a 4 week course, “Awakening with Trauma,” that Lynn Marie is teaching beginning February 24th. The course will go into more depth about trauma and how to be with that as we awaken. This webinar will be primarily focused on working with the participants experientially.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and author. She is the co-author of The Awakening West and is a contributing author to The Sacred Mirror, as well as the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships. Lynn Marie has been a student of Adyashanti for over 20 years. For more information, please see www.lynnmarielumiere.com
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can.
Review in advance info for joining event.
Lynn Marie Lumiere ~ Awakening with Trauma: A 4 Week Online Course
Although our true nature is untouched by anything we experience, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in trauma. Any experience, especially early in life, that is outside our window of tolerance, can overwhelm our nervous system and create chronic stress patterns in the body/mind. These stuck patterns can affect our spiritual awakening process by making it more difficult to relax, trust, be in the present moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening.
This course will explore how to see healing from trauma and spiritual awakening as one process; each supporting the other. The more we awaken to our true nature, the more capacity we have to be present with traumatic stress; and the more we work with the trauma, the more capacity we have to be awake. Therefore, this course will point to both working with trauma using therapeutic methods and awakening to what is already free.
This four-week course will include the following topics:
- What is trauma? How it affects our neuro-physiology and creates fixed beliefs
- How trauma can be a path to awakening
- How trauma can be an obstacle to awakening
- How healing trauma and awakening are not separate paths
- How it’s not your fault—It’s your nervous system
- Skills for being present with and healing symptoms of trauma
- Guided meditations for awakening
March 2020
Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ Shining as Silence
9:30 am to 11:30 am (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter
We are so lucky to know of this most precious place of Silence inside of us. Do you visit frequently to connect, taste, steep in, and be taken? When we rest as the bliss of Being, we allow ourselves to shine as That. Naturally, any form of mind will disarm and soften into Being.
Please know we cannot bring anything with us into this most precious place that we are. It’s like melting into the arms of the Great Mother. We can only open ourselves to be touched, and taken more deeply into Her. She holds all of us. We are so helped and supported beyond what we can imagine. Be nourished by Her!
Come and join us in abiding and deepening in and as the True Nature that we are, and be completely nourished!
Marlies Myoku has devoted her life to the Beloved. She brings a potent invitation into the deep Silence that we are. The kindness of her gentle and direct teaching guides us home like a lighthouse. She helps people to see that freedom and peace lie not in escaping from difficulties, but rather in completely welcoming and receiving all that the Mystery presents.
She has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies is trained as a psychologist in The Netherlands, a Hakomi therapist, and a Tantric educator. For over 25 years she has been ushering seekers into living the Divine in the body. She has a passion and a gift for bringing together the Sensual Body and the Silence of our Being.
She lives in Santa Cruz; California, but works internationally. Marlies is interviewed in the book Awakened Relating. A Guide To Embodying Undivided love in Intimate Relationships by Lynn Marie Lumiere, and in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom by R.M. Robinson
“With Adya, the bottom fell out. I deeply knew I am not this body, mind, thought, psyche, and I am also all these things as well. There was no in and/or out. All is One.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can.
Review in advance info for joining event.
Tilicho ~ On Non-duality
As of SUNDAY early morning March 8TH, clocks in the USA are turned forward 1 hour - "Spring Ahead".
Daylight Savings Time begins. Our event times are shown as Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) starting Sunday March 8th am
What is non-duality? How to combine Self-knowledge and self-integration? How can the path of love and the path of "silence" unite? How to end the old duality between the Masculine and the Feminine, within and without. You are invited to see through the most ancient reason for all the trouble in the world.
New to Tilicho? Watch an online event compilation video here.
About Tilicho:
Tilicho spontaneously realized the Self in 1998 without following any teaching or practice. The absence of spiritual conditioning allowed her to see through the veils of spiritual idealism and illusions. She ended up spending thirteen years in Tiruvannamalai in south India, the seat of Ramana Maharshi and the sacred mountain, Arunachala. While recognizing the beauty of the Advaita teachings, she also observed that they can easily be misunderstood and distorted. Although the Self is eternally free from the world, it is not separate from it. Clarity does not exclude openness. Her teaching stresses the need to combine Masculine and Feminine qualities and approaches. It is an invitation to find unity within and without.
“May all beings realize who they truly are! Om Sat Chit Ananda.”
If you wish to follow the initiation with the help of the book The Source, satsangs will also be the place to provide support, help, healing and clarity.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ From Selfish to Selfless
The journey of embodiment includes a transformation from the self-focused fixations of the child to the offering of the full, mature, realized heart. Jeannie will lead an inquiry, talk and exchange into the realms of selfishness and self-fulness, exploring the gifts of awakening, the practice of cultivation, how we meet needs for healing and self nurture, and the fruit of the spiritual path: offering one’s whole heart to the world.
Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »